31 December 2004.     Jayyus: The Massacre of the Trees / David Schulman

            It is the last day of the year, a glowing, shimmering, mid-winter world of sun and rock, the light so intense it cuts your eyes. What light reveals hurts the heart. Even great beauty—especially beauty—hurts.

            I have never been to Jayyus, just north of Kalkiliya, now on the eastern side of the Wall. Groggy, sleep-deprived—for the last days have been full of pressure, and for some time I was unwell—I peer through the windows of the bus at the hills green with winter rains. “Are you going to a New Year’s party?” I ask Amiel, beside me. He smiles and waves his hand at the bus, the volunteers, the rocks and trees outside. “This is my New Year’s party,” he says.

            We cannot reach the village itself; today’s action is aimed at the village lands west of the Wall, beyond the farmers’ reach. What is happening in Jayyus is typical of Palestinian villages situated along this northern segment of the Wall, which strays from the Green Line—the International Border—encroaching deep upon Palestinian land. The fields and vineyards and groves between the Green Line and the Wall are being rapidly annexed to Israel through an accelerated process of legal chicanery, state building, and settlers’ enterprise, with the army and police there to see that nothing disturbs this massive land-grab. Thus Jayyus has lost 72% of its lands (8600 dunams) to the Wall. These lands are now being taken over by the state to build a new settlement, Zufin Zafon, a continuation of the older settlement of Zufin which faces Jayyus on the next ridge. Straw companies owned by settlers are preparing the ground for 2100 new building units. The bulldozers have been active throughout December; two weeks ago they uprooted 300 olive trees, some of them very old, on land belonging to Tawfiq Hassan Salim from Jayyus, who watched helplessly from his house on the other side of the Wall. The next step is very clear:  Israeli law states that farmers who do not work their lands for three years in a row can be dispossessed, the land becoming miri, or state property. Since the villagers no longer have regular access to these fields, they will certainly lose them. Moreover, all six wells that served Jayyus are west of the fence, in the area to be annexed; the village now has to buy water from outside. Take this as emblematic:  Sharon is drying out Jayyus, like so many other villages in this area, the breadbasket of Palestine, with the obvious aim of impoverishing the Palestinians and driving them from their homes.

            On December 19^th the villagers managed to face the bulldozers in non-violent protest, which stopped them for the moment. The pattern of grass-roots, spontaneous Gandhian-style activism that cropped up in Budrus last spring is recurring here.  The courts have yet to pronounce on the legality of what is happening in Jayyus; but what is beyond any doubt is that Jayyus is part of a much wider scheme of accelerated settlement and annexation aimed at obliterating the Green Line forever. All this is taking place in the context of the confused political situation and the smoke-screen of the Gaza disengagement, which serves Sharon very well. He needs only a few more months to complete the theft of another huge chunk of historic Palestine.

            We have come to show our solidarity with the villagers and, specifically, to replant the plundered field with young olive saplings. Perhaps this will stop the bulldozers for another few days. Perhaps not. On one level, our gesture, seen against the grand machinations of the government and the army, is pitiful, ineffectual almost by definition. On another level, if we persist, and if the people of Jayyus persist, there is at least a chance that eventually we will save these fields. It is, perhaps, not so terrible to be ineffectual if you have hope. I am certain—almost certain—that in the end we, the bumbling, well-intentioned soldiers of peace, will win.

            The army and the police, as always, are waiting for us, this time in force. There are many jeeps full of soldiers and policemen, most of them heavily armed. They block the road leading to the Jayyus fields at the very point it turns off from the main highway. We have been prepared for this moment. Quickly we disembark from the three buses—some 120 volunteers—and prepare to wash over the soldiers’ barricade. Each of us picks up an olive sapling wrapped in black plastic. There are many posters and signs as well:  “Stop the theft of the land!” “The Wall will fall.” “Occupation and settlements are the opposite of peace.” “They disengage in Gaza in order to settle the West Bank.” I am carrying the medic’s pouch and, uselessly, my winter jacket, in case I get arrested and have to spend the night in some frozen cell. But at this point, 11:00 AM, it is hot and getting hotter. We scatter over the hill, clutching the tiny olive trees and the signs.

            The jeeps follow us as best they can, some of the officers walking on foot alongside us. Clearly, they are not eager to get into a clash, at least not at this point. It is a long walk through the heat, easily an hour, and soon I am thirsty, covered with sweat. We pass groves of mango and guava, the orchards of Jayyus, which so far the villagers have managed to care for by crossing through the Wall with army permits. Soon this, too, will become impossible; once the new settlement is in place, the villagers will automatically be seen as security risks, and the roads and footpaths closed to them.

            Ta’ayush conversations, the staff of life, unfold as we walk. It is always good to have Amiel beside me; he is an endless mine of Latin poems and ancient wisdom. Yasmin, once a student of mine, has recently returned from Ladakh. She is a superb linguist; she tells me how she learned Turkish last year in about a month. I listen, envious, as she speaks a fluent Arabic with our Palestinian volunteers. She has been out of sorts for weeks, she says, perhaps it is the situation; but today, seeing 120 people carrying their olive saplings, she is happy again, for this moment. I meet Marty, a Californian specializing in conflict resolution. There are many foreign volunteers, some from Germany, others from Scandinavia, also a contingent of wild-haired anarchists in black tee-shirts. Meanwhile, I am rapidly bonding with my sapling, though it is a rather scrawny specimen:  will it survive the first winter storm, let alone a determined attack by the bulldozers? I feel a strong urge to protect it, though it is becoming heavy in my hands.

            We climb the hill to the ravaged field. The ancient olives are gone—apparently to some contractor in Tel Aviv, who will make a killing. We have seen the devastating pictures of three hundred olive trees, roots up, from just two weeks ago. “Is a tree in the field a human being who can take refuge during a siege?” Now we pause amidst the rocks for the necessary speeches. Abu Azzam, from Jayyus, takes the megaphone. “Friends, comrades. Your coming here today has great meaning for us. It is a very deep act. In a time when the Israeli government and the Israeli army are making our lives into a daily hell, you have come as friends to help us.” He tells the story of the fields. First, in December 2000, the Civil Administration renumbered all the plots of land, but they refused to hand the new maps over to the villagers. When the latter received notices that plots 786 and 788 were being appropriated for the new settlement, they had no idea what these numbers meant. Only on December 15^th, two weeks ago, under pressure from the courts, did the authorities hand over the maps. Now the people of Jayyus knew: they were to lose everything. Then there is the devilish legal rule that a field that is 50 % stones reverts to the state. Is there any field or olive grove on these hills that is not covered with stones?

            Abu Azzam wants one state for everyone, Palestinians and Jews, a state where there is room for all and all will live in peace. Some of the volunteers applaud his vision. Others are skeptical. But no sooner has he finished than the police officer in charge delivers his expected threat. “You are on private land. You are breaking the law. If any one of you tries to plant a tree here, he will be filmed and brought to justice. We will use all the means at our disposal.” He has been waiting for this moment for the last couple of hours.

            This is our signal. We burst up the path to the open, more level stretch of mountainside and start to work. There are not enough shovels, but we begin, somehow, to excavate shallow pits for the saplings. There are 100 young olive trees in our hands, and we are determined to plant them right here, amidst the rocks and the soldiers. The police photographers are filming furiously, pit by pit, recording our heinous crime. We take no notice. Surprisingly, to my intense relief, there are no arrests, no blows from the truncheons or the rifle butts. In fact, a sweet and surreal silence suddenly envelops this dry hillside, as if the sheer magic of planting trees had taken over all the other, conflicted, confused thoughts and feelings, as if even the soldiers had become entranced by the vision of these people, young and old, Arabs and Jews, digging with their hands into the hard ground so that something new can grow. I look around:  the hillside is covered with small groups of planters, and dozens of tiny saplings are now bravely standing more or less erect in the upturned brown soil. It is another Ta’ayush moment, that eery, unstructured limbo that we enter from time to time, always with the soldiers or the police or, worst of all, the settlers to share it with us, always with a strangely delicious uncertainty about what will happen next. Often such moments are noisy; people scream, some may be hurt, the soldiers snarl, sometimes they shoot their canisters of tear-gas or stun grenades, but today, under the blazing winter sun, there is a sleepwalker’s quiet. Abu Azzam was right: I feel the depth of this visionary space. In the distance, we can see one or two houses at the edge of the village, across the Wall. Perhaps they are watching us from afar as we tend their field.

            Gadi appears beside me—I have finished watering one of the saplings, giving it a headstart in the unequal battle ahead of it—and he is happy, I think, and, like me, oddly at peace. If one has to get arrested, he says, it should happen now, over this—let them try to convince the court that planting an olive tree is an act of treason. Dana, beside me, with long black curls, poses mischievously for the police camera that lingers over her face. We finish patting down the fresh soil and prepare to leave.

            But it is not quite over yet. Our plan is to reach the Wall and make our protest there while the villagers of Jayyus reach the same spot from the other side. We will not be able to mingle with them, but let us at least see one another. So we start off over the hills again in the direction of the vast swathe of metal and stone that has cut the land in two. Ahead of me is a Palestinian woman in a black robe, carrying a huge sign in English: “You can’t uproot Palestine.” We are moving along a path that winds through olive groves; the village emerges fully into view. Suddenly the police officer barks at us through his megaphone: “No farther. You are breaking the law. If you take another step, you will be arrested. We are prepared to stop you.”

            Gadi rushes forward to negotiate; I catch his eye, he signals to me to circle through the olives, to get beyond the soldiers. We head off over the terraces, through the trees, stumbling over the rocks. An older woman who has come, it seems, for the first time to a Ta’ayush action is suddenly afraid. “What will happen now?” she asks me. “I don’t know what to do.” Don’t worry, I tell her, it is nothing; stay with the others, we are safer together. I help her descend a rocky terrace. Volunteers are pouring over the path, the police have lost control. Their jeeps grind their way, honking wildly, over the bumpy dirt road, forcing the volunteers to the side. Finally they halt us about 100 meters from the Wall. On the other side, barely visible, stand the villagers, waiting. Between us there are suddenly rather a lot of soldiers; I count ten new army vehicles, watch the soldiers unload the tear-gas guns. Mostly we are worried that they will turn the gas on the Palestinians, as is their wont.

            Instead, everyone stops on the brink. Negotiations ensue. Meanwhile, absurdity takes over, as is only fitting for this mad scene of massacred olive trees and yellow bulldozers and settlers and soldiers and the vast monster that is the Wall and the motley crowd of volunteers that have come here to cry out against it. A Palestinian man goes off into the green field on my right and prostrates himself in prayer: it is time. A cart and mule, with two villagers, wait behind us, hoping to cross over into Jayyus if the soldiers open the gate. The crazy anarchists begin a vaudeville-like dance routine, right here on the muddy path, brandishing their legs at the soldiers as they sing, in an English drawl: “We’re gonna shake off, shake off, that military rule....We’ll never be safe, never safe, with that Apartheid Wall.” I can hear the policeman arguing with Gadi:  “I am just doing my job.”  “We don’t want any kind of violence,” Gadi says, not for the first time today, “but we won’t be deterred.” In the midst of the hubbub, a letter arrives from the other side of the fence—from Tawfiq Hassan Salim, he of the plundered olive grove. The letter is read aloud. “I am sorry I could not come to meet you at the Wall. I am mourning my murdered olive trees. For decades I nurtured them and loved them like children. I sit and weep in my house. You have come as if to comfort a mourner, and you have touched my heart. You give me hope. I wish I could welcome you as my guests, but between us stands the Wall.”  Hisham, one of the Ta’ayush lawyers, now cries out in impassioned Arabic, his voice hoarse, the syllables tripping from his tongue: “We want peace, we believe in peace, peace without occupation. They must stop stealing the land. You cannot steal the land and make peace. We will make peace in spite of Sharon.”

            We have brought with us a gift for Jayyus:  one large olive tree, left behind in the field on the day they uprooted the other 299. The soldiers make way as a group of four volunteers approaches the gate; as it is opened, they hand the tree over to our friends on the other side.  That is as much as we could do. It is not enough.  It is never enough. It is time to go home. And my sapling? Probably tomorrow it will be gone.